Destination: Vertical
by going by me
Summary: Oneshot following the season 5 finale. Meredith is unaware of Izzie's crisis and Cristina of George's. This fic explores how they get to know about it. Meredith's point of view, but the story includes all fab five as well as Derek and Bailey.


_A/N - So I watched the finale and felt a desire to write something. I honestly have no idea who will live and who will die, but Meredith was with George and Cristina was with Izzie by the time of their respective crises. I have a suspicion that when season six begins, some time will have passed, so I wanted to explore how it might be when Cristina and Meredith tell each other about what has happened. _

_I'm sorry for all possible medical inaccuracies. I tried to look it up, but I'm just saying, don't take advice from me on surgery or post-op care. I think this will be just a oneshot, if I don't find any sudden desire to go on with it. I hope you'll enjoy it. A review is always appreciated!_

-----

Meredith tried to think about nothing else than the large skull flap or the sucker she carefully had maneuvered through the hemorrhage when she, Owen and Derek stood poured over the open brain. The minutes it had taken them to get the bed wheeled to the O.R. had seemed like a blur and she had acted on autopilot when scrubbing in. Yet, never before over an open body cavity had she wished for the time to stop.

Neither Derek nor Owen had asked her if she would manage. She just had to. So she blankly refused to think of him as anything else than the patient. Someone whose brain to cut open just to realize that drill holes had just been a temporary solution. The thing was, she didn't really want to think about that not even the decompressive craniectomy Derek desperately had pulled seemed to decrease the ICP levels.

The O.R. was quiet. She didn't dare to look up to see the faces on the two men standing next to her, who had stopped their synchronized surgical pirouettes and stopped asking her in short, urgent manners to hold a clamp or intensify the suction.

"Damn it," Owen said quietly at last.

Meredith's heart skipped a beat.

"He's coded twice already..." Derek confirmed, but Meredith cut him off.

"We can't just abandon him!" She hadn't meant for it to come out in a strange high pitch, but she wasn't really sure which voice she should have been going for. Confident didn't seem like the emotion in place here.

"Meredith..."

"We have an obligation!" she insisted. "We can't just abandon..."

"Dr. Grey," Owen said. "We've exposed the dura mater; the brain can swell without causing herniation. We can't do more for him at the moment."

Meredith knew she must look like a deer caught in the headlights because of Derek's way of looking at her over the surgical mask.

"We have an obligation," she whispered.

"And we will do everything in our power to fulfil it," Derek said. "But the ICP levels need to decrease." Even if his words may contain hope, his voice told Meredith what she already knew. She lowered her eyes.

"We have to finish here and let his brain rest," Owen agreed. "We'll go in later and try to evacuate more of the bleed. If..."

Even if he didn't say it, Meredith knew what he was trying to tell her. _If he lives. _She let a moan slip out of her throat. Most of all she wanted to let go of all her control and wail out to the walls. But she swallowed.

"Could we... " Her voice came out as a strangled version of itself, and she had to start over. "Could we cover him up? People need to... we need to... "

"Say goodbye," Derek finished quietly for her. "You need to say goodbye to him."

Meredith gave him the tiniest nod. Without wasting a second, the two men's hands resumed their quiet, evenly rhythm, patching the dura with a watertight pericardial graft; their possibly last favor to one of their own.

The wheeling of his bed from the O.R. to the ICU had been wordless. Meredith couldn't remember scrubbing out of the surgery but she could easily recall the steady beat of the wheels against the hard floor. She was sure they hadn't been moving as slowly as that time, but it made her think of her and Dylan's walk between O.R.'s where every wrong step, every uneven surface and hasty motion could blow them up.

"Answer," she mumbled and checked her pager for what felt like the umpteenth time over the last fifteen minutes. "Answer, answer, answer."

She closed her eyes briefly. She'd been sitting at George's bedside ever since the surgery. He still hadn't woken up, but his breathing was even and stable. Derek had gone to call Mrs. O'Malley again after two fruitless efforts to reach her.

She'd been paging Cristina and Alex repeatedly, but with what seemed to be meaningless effort. She didn't dare to page Izzie; she might have come out of surgery alive, but her memory shortcomings had been enough to evoke some highly undesired memories and she didn't want to break this to her without preparing better.

George's hand laid limp at his side. Meredith shuddered at the thought of how hard he had tried to communicate with her through it, so she took it in her own and squeezed it a little. George showed no reaction, but she started to stroke with her fingers over it. She wanted George to know he wasn't alone in this. She guessed it would be a good thing to talk to him, but she really didn't know what to say.

"What the hell," she muttered. "I talked to my senile mother all the time. I had practice."

She leaned forward and managed a small smile for George, as if he could see him and as if this was a normal conversation in his bed like those nights the world had been such a letdown that she and Izzie would sleep there.

"You know," she said to him. "I was getting bright and shiny for once. Even Cristina said so. I did change." She smiled through her veil of tears. "You're making me all dark and twisty again. I guess you didn't want me to change after all, huh?"

She smoothed some invisible crinkles on the sheet and made sure that his vitals hadn't dropped.

"Derek told me it wasn't a flaw, though," she continued. "That it was a strength. He told me in the elevator when he didn't propose." She came to think of something. "Did you know we got married today? You made us too busy for City Hall, so we did it right here, in the lounge. Just us, you know? Simple. Like Izzie would never have planned it."

She laughed a little, knowing the smile that would have been on George's face, had he been conscious and unscratched, then glanced at her pager again. Still nothing from either Cristina or Alex. What were they off doing; they really should be here for this. They were family.

"Izzie came out of surgery, George," she whispered. "She lived. And she's not a veggie." She hesitated a little. "She's having a bit of trouble remembering things," she admitted. "But hopefully all she needs is some recovery time. Alex's writing her a lot of post-it notes." Even though she put on an assuring voice, she knew it was just as much for herself as for George.

The sound of someone clearing his throat made her turn around. Derek was standing at the door, looking solemnly at her.

"Mrs. O'Malley?" Meredith asked hoarsely.

"We've reached her at last. It will take her some time to get here, though. She's visiting her sister in Portland." He looked at George's form in the bed. "He hasn't woken up?"

Meredith shook her head. "You need to get Cristina and Alex," she mumbled. "They won't answer my page."

Derek walked across the room and stood behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and slowly brushed them up and down her arms. "You need a break."

"I can't leave him," Meredith whispered. "Someone has to be here if he..."

Derek bent down and kissed the top of her head, nodded silently and left the room again. She liked that he finally knew her so well that he saw no point in arguing with her over this. She simply had to be here. Someone wasn't enough. It had to be her. She had missed his signals the first time he tried to say something, and she didn't dare to think about what would have happened if she hadn't been able to interpret him the second.

"You're a hero," she told him. "I know I said this before, but you really are. You saved a woman's life. I know you wanted to go out in war, and now you won't be able to, but you did save a life. Right here. Even before you reported on duty, you risked your life for another person. That's pretty heroic." She squeezed his hand again. "You've saved several lives here, George. You're no 007. You're the heart in the elevator guy."

She swallowed a sob, not wanting to say the words that danced around in her mind like annoying bugs not leaving at a warm summer's night. Not wanting to acknowledge anything in the lines of 'you'll be remembered as...'.

"Remember..." she began anyway, not really sure of what she wanted to say, but smiling when a memory floated to the surface. "Remember all those times we used to spend in the nursery, pouring over those cute babies?" She chuckled a little when she thought about how George had had to drag her with him, knowing she was just as keen as him to go up there, especially after a tough case. "You always seemed to know when I needed it."

Before she could help himself, she reached out and touched his face. Carefully, she let her fingers trail his cheeks, following the burned and bruised skin up to the fine hairline. His hair was totally covered in a white bandage, loosely wrapped to cover the exposed skull and she couldn't tingle her hands in it. She guessed it would be taken off once they fixed him up for the funeral, but bit her lip as soon as that thought nudged her mind. Once Derek got to replace the bone flap, that was.

"You know when we were lying under that Christmas tree Izzie set up?" she quickly said, wanting to break the silence that so easily got her to think of things she really didn't want to. "Looking at the lights, with Doc next to us? That was when I realized you were family. You are my family, George, the one I never had. You all are."

She had stopped bothering with checking her pager anymore. Derek would find them, and bring them. George was stable; they would get there in time. She didn't want her attention to be divided this possibly last time with him. The memories brought tears to her eyes, but she found that they comforted her all the same. She closed her mind and searched for another one.

"We really kicked those interns' asses a couple of weeks ago," she reminded him proudly. "I can't believe Bailey compared them to us. We were great interns." She rolled her eyes. "We certainly didn't send mass e-mails or text messages with naked pictures. Or beat the crap out of each other." She tilted her head a little. "Well, you did beat up Alex once. That was kind of great. But my point was, we kicked their asses. We are great residents as well."

She stopped talking abruptly. George's breaths, that had been slow and steady the whole time, were getting fainter and shallow. She looked wildly around her, but to no avail. The monitors started to beep; his vitals dropped faster than she could take it in. The autopilot kicking in once again, she pushed the code button and started massaging the heart.

The next couple of minutes passed in a blur, yet she could replay every painful second in her mind afterwards. The room filled with nurses, paddles and febrile activity. She was charging and charging again, until a young, serious-looking fifth year neuro resident took over for her.

She remembered the truth dawning on her while she was shoved aside, not caring that her tears were falling freely. He would slip away before anyone could come. She certainly couldn't leave to get anyone -- that had been Derek's mission very many minutes ago anyway, and he still hadn't returned.

She shut her eyes closed upon hearing the dreaded drawn-out beep and the silence that followed when they resident with the boyish face sighed and called it. The nurses filed out, bringing the equipment and leaving her alone, sending her pitying looks.

The fifth year laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "It's always hard when they die on you. But he was a goner. Don't beat yourself up. You did what you could." He nodded gently and walked out before Meredith could say anything.

Trying hard to pretend the clueless resident just hadn't said anything at all, she returned to her place next to the bed on shaky legs. George looked the same. He was still hooked up to the machine. Blinking away her tears, Meredith reached out for it, turning off the power. With trembling hands, she loosened the tape around his mouth and gently dragged the breathing tube out.

She lay her head on his chest and let her free hand stroke his left arm the best she could.

"We'll always remember you," she promised when she finally couldn't deny the words anymore. "Because you're George and you're so great..." She choked on a sob and had to gasp for breath before she could continue. "And maybe I'm not saying the perfect things, but you always could." She thought of what she'd told Cristina earlier. "I love you, George O'Malley," she said at last. "I'll miss you so much."

-----

She didn't know how long she had been sitting with him after his body had finally had given up, but eventually, she found herself slumped in a chair outside the patients' rooms. She hadn't seen neither Derek nor any of her friends, but unless they hadn't come up and knocked her on the shoulder, she doubted that she would have noticed if they had passed by.

She was astonished over how the floor seemed to function totally normally. One of their doctors had just died, and still there was activity; nurses and patients ran around, pagers beeped and elevators kept going up and down. She thought about what George had been about to do. It was probably like this in the army; one of your men went down, but you still had to fight for all of the others. You had to keep going. She clearly wasn't suited for the army. She couldn't imagine how to keep going right now. How to keep breathing.

A sudden movement beside her startled her and she turned her head to see Cristina heavily sitting down next to her.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Meredith replied slowly, contemplating how she should tell her, or if she simply should yell at her for not answering any of her pages so that she would have known already.

"Have you heard about Izzie?" Cristina asked cautiously. When she saw Meredith freeze, she continued. "She went into cardiac arrest from the hyperkalemia. She... I mean, her chart cover says DNR in huge red letters, but somehow Bailey and the Chief skipped that part, so she's back again. We lost her for a while, though, but I'm pretty sure... Mer?

Meredith stared wildly at her, her mind having stopped taking in anything beyond the cardiac arrest. Not until now did she notice Cristina's pallid face and her exhausted features and the fact that they were sitting just a few feet from where Izzie had been laying for days. The world seemed to fade a little bit in the edges.

"Izzie... she's... what?"

"She collapsed," Cristina repeated. "Alex called a code. Bailey and the Chief managed to revive her. She's okay, as far as we can see anyway."

"She's... her memory?" Meredith whispered.

"She got it back before she collapsed. I don't know her current status. Derek's running some tests right now. He came by before we could page him."

Meredith swallowed. That's where her friends had been. Helping Izzie back to life instead of helping George out of it. All her tension and bitterness she hadn't realized until now that she had been carrying on, dissolved and she just felt empty.

"Meredith?" Cristina seemed concerned. It wasn't like her usual flat, sarcastic tone or even her impatient one that implied serious eye-rolling at what just had been said. "She's alive."

"It's not Izzie." Her words came out so tiny they merely made it past her lips. When she looked at Cristina's frowning face, she felt tears springing to her eyes again. "John Doe. He died. We closed him during surgery and he died fifteen minutes ago."

Cristina nodded slowly. "I'm sorry."

But Meredith saw that she didn't really grasp why she would be this upset over a patient's death, especially not in light of what she just had told her. She looked down at the floor. The carpet had blue and white edges and she scraped with her foot over it. Something made it hard to breathe. She knew she was about to crash Cristina's world and there was nothing more she wanted to right now than to postpone the moment just a little further.

"Meredith?"

"It was George, Cristina."

Again, Meredith lost track of the time they'd been sitting together until Alex stood before them. Hurdled next to each other like two crows on a telephone pole, they had been grieving together, yet in silence. Cristina had stared at her in even more disbelief than Meredith before, but she was yet to say something and Meredith hadn't pushed her. Cristina's stiff posture didn't invite to any real hugging, but she had lain her head on her shoulder and not cared about that it may constitute it.

"Did you hear?" Alex said tiredly. Like Cristina he looked exhausted and the dark circles beneath his eyes did nothing to reduce that impression. Holding a bagel in his right hand and a cup of Styrofoam in his left, he had obviously been down to the cafeteria to fuel for another sitting with Izzie.

Meredith nodded. Taking the foaming coffee he offered her a sip from, she squeezed his now free hand. "Alex," she whispered, tears evident in her eyes.

"It's okay," Alex reassured. "She's okay. I think she's awake too. You can go see her." His voice tried to be confident, but Meredith heard how Izzie's collapse still played in his mind and she thought about his words on the bench outside the hospital just before she had offered him her wedding. As much as she wanted him to remain blissful about the fact that Izzie hadn't died on him, he needed to know that George had.

"O'Malley's not with you?" he asked as if he had read her thoughts.

"George... he's not..." she managed to say without having to swallow hard, but she couldn't bear to finish her sentence.

"What?" Alex said, confused. "Did he leave already?"

Meredith bit her lip. She couldn't stand saying it again. She looked pleadingly at Cristina, who to her relief seemed to have regained some of her composure. She met Meredith's gaze and silently agreed to her unspoken request.

"George... he's dead, Alex," she said bluntly, her voice quiet but clear. An untrained listener might have interpreted it as devoid of any emotions, but Meredith heard the soft tremble behind her words.

Alex looked at them, clearly bewildered over the turn their conversation had taken. "Dead?" he said uncertainly. "But he hasn't left for the army yet." He tried a laugh, but it fell to the ground at the same time it left his lips. "I know I said he'd get killed, but he hasn't even left yet," he argued.

"He was Meredith's dragged-under-a-bus guy." Cristina looked like she was about to say something more, but thought better of it and fell into Meredith's silence. They knew to wait for the truth to sink in, and they watched Alex's form crumple where he stood as he took in the impact of what they were trying to tell him. As the bagel fell to the floor, Meredith was secretly grateful that she had gotten the hold of the coffee cup. Carefully, she set it down on the bench and waited for Alex to say something.

"007 is dead?" he croaked at last. As disbelieving as his voice was, Meredith's blood froze in her veins at his words.

"Don't _ever_ call him that again." She said it quietly, but her voice was ice and she met Alex and Cristina's surprised looks with a glance of steel. Then she started to cry. Not letting the tears just leak silently like before, she sat slumped at the bench and did nothing to stop the sobs that seared through her body even when she felt Alex sit down and put his arm on her back.

She pressed her face against his shoulder not caring if his scrubs got soaked and felt the knot of pain in her chest loosen a little. She heard Alex mumble something against her hair, and she lifted her head a little to hear him.

"How the hell am I supposed to tell Iz?" he repeated, his voice broken, but almost on the edge to angry. "'Welcome back, you're alive and your best friend is dead.' Really gonna help her recovery process, don't you think?"

Meredith didn't know what to say. She'd pushed the thought of Izzie back in her mind, but now it came back with full force. How _were_ they supposed to tell her? She was unstable. Fragile. And George had been her best friend.

Once again, Cristina stepped up. "We'll tell her together," she said, breaking them out of their paralyzed state, reaching her hand out to them both.

Alex let go of Meredith, but didn't take Cristina's hand. "I'm making the call. I'm not telling her if she seems the least upset. You two don't say a word."

Without another word he went into Izzie's room. He didn't wait for any of the others to follow, but as they did they found Izzie lying in her bed, eyes peacefully closed and a small smile playing on her lips. Neither of them said anything to disturb her; yet, as soon as they all stood around her, her eyes flew open and darted around the room, no doubt taking in the party of only three.

"Where's... George?"

There was an uncomfortable silence, in which Cristina and Meredith looked pointedly at Alex.

"Izzie..." he began tentatively.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Izzie whispered.

Silence again, this time not uncomfortable so much as totally nonplussed. Cristina looked bewildered, but Alex's face started to redden.

"Who told you?" he demanded. "Who sprung this on you?"

Izzie shook her head. "I knew."

"You knew?" Meredith echoed. "You saw him?"

From having stared dreamingly into space, Izzie turned her head and her and Meredith's eyes locked. In Izzie's there was relief; in Meredith's, a distant pain. A silent understanding went between them, not unnoticed by neither Alex nor Cristina.

"What do you mean, you saw him?" Alex wanted to know. "You haven't been out of your room, and besides, he's unrecognizable."

"You saw him in the between," Meredith said quietly. "Like I saw my mother."

Cristina and Alex both turned to look at her with utter confusion. This was something she had never told any of them. Even Derek didn't know.

"What is this?" Alex asked, getting frustrated with each second. "An episode of Ghost Whisperer?"

Meredith ignored him and reached for Izzie's hand. Izzie squeezed it desperately, trying to stop her tears running down her cheeks.

"I'm the one dying from a five percent survival rate cancer, and George beats me to the woods. Isn't that ridiculous?" Izzie curled up to a little ball on the bed, sobbing inconsolably. "I-isn't that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?"

"He didn't die alone," Meredith said, tearing up again. "He wasn't alone." She felt utterly helpless. It was like a bad remake of prom night, with Izzie crying in a hospital bed grieving a man that she had loved, only this time with much less hair and certainly less fancy clothes.

As quietly as Meredith had closed the door behind them when they entered, it was opened now. If Meredith hadn't let her eyes dart to the floor in the lack of anything to say in just that moment, she had never caught Dr. Bailey in the corner of her eye. Meredith had seen Bailey in numerous occasions, in good as well as in sad times, but never had her posture seemed so broken.

Without a word, Meredith and Cristina shifted to make room for their former resident where they stood. Meredith found that had it been anyone else coming into the room in this very moment, she would have been disturbed. Mourning George was obviously something the whole hospital could, and would, do, but in here it felt like their private gathering. Even Derek -- where was he, by the way? -- would have felt like an intruder right now. But Bailey, their superior as she was, was in her own way also one of them. She'd been mothering them since the very beginning; she had formed them. They were hers.

Meredith saw that in spite of her red rimmed eyes, Bailey took them in with her usual sharpness and efficiency, and wasn't surprised when soon enough she spoke.

"George died like a hero." Her voice was soft, but her statement left no room for doubt or objections. "He wanted to go out in war -- and only God knows why -- and he wanted to help people." She made sure to catch eyes with each of them. Izzie was still lying on her side, but eventually, she looked up and it was not until then Bailey continued to speak.

"He knew the risks with working in the field. He was prepared to die for others. And even though he never made it out there, he got to do just that."

Meredith expected her to say more things; list reasons why they should mourn less, why they should get rid of the devastation and the feelings that all this was totally unfair, meaningless and completely wrong that no doubt plagued the others as much as it did her, but Bailey was silent. She sank down onto the chair at the left side of Izzie's bed and made no attempt to wipe the tears forming in her eyes. Just half an hour ago, she'd saved the life of one of her residents; she'd cheated death and now, in the light of what had happened with one of her others, it might just have been a lifetime ago.

No one spoke for a long time. Izzie remained in her fetal position and Alex sat crumpled at the foot-end of her bed, staring straight ahead of him. Cristina had slipped down the wall and sat with her legs drawn to her chest and her arms tightly around them. Only Meredith remained standing. It was not that she wouldn't have liked to sit down; suddenly, she felt drained of all energy, but it was to such an extent that she didn't want to even move her feet. So she stood.

When someone finally spoke, she was jerked from the world where silence reigned and sorrow was a tension that could be taken upon.

"Grey," Bailey said quietly. "Derek was asking for you earlier. I told him to wait for you." Meredith nodded, grateful for getting an answer to that one. Bailey swallowed and gently squeezed Izzie's hand. "You would want to say goodbye. Mrs. O'Malley is expected to arrive in an hour. And then..."

"They need to take him to the morgue," Izzie whispered.

"Yes."

"No." Izzie didn't move at all; she didn't look at anyone. "I saw him. I've said my goodbye."

No one spoke for a moment. No one made any attempt to move until Alex rose.

"Iz, I know that's not George in there." He bent down to Izzie's head. "You might have said your goodbyes, and it might not be the George you loved lying in that bed. But while he lived, he loved you. And he wouldn't want you to lie here alone. Like he was there for you when Denny died, he would want us to be there for you now. We need each other, Iz."

"He said I would know which way to choose," Izzie said out in the air. "Just this morning, he was holding my hand. And now..."

"Come on." Alex gently pushed the covers to the side and lifted Izzie up in his arms. Bailey followed his moves like had they practiced beforehand; smoothly loosening all wires connected to Izzie. On her nod, Meredith took a steady grip of the I.V. pole, and together, they slowly and silently began their walk to the room where George lay waiting for them.

Cristina went in first. Her head was bowed when she took her place in one of the chairs that someone had placed there obviously for the occasion of mourning. Alex carefully sat down at the opposite side of the bed, his grip of Izzie as tight as hers of him. Meredith quietly followed with the I.V. pole and slipped into the chair next to Cristina after having positioned it close enough for it not to painfully stretch into Izzie's arm.

Bailey sent a sweeping look over the room. Seeing all her residents together, she nodded and silently closed the door.


End file.
